


wife for dark nights

by Tamari



Series: Memory Shredded [3]
Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Dark, Forum: Goldenlake, Gen, Generational Trauma, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Indigenous characters, K'mir, Kalasin & her people, Sarain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:01:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25192834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamari/pseuds/Tamari
Summary: The last time Kalasin ever sees her home.
Series: Memory Shredded [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1817956
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	wife for dark nights

  
Kalasin sees her homeland and her tribe for the last time in the winter, while the land slumbers under a sheet of ice. The ice has thawed and refrozen until it shines, slick as a Shappa River trout. She has never seen her mountains so beautiful. She has never seen her people so desolate.  
  
Twenty-one years ago, Kalasin rode away with Adigun _jin_ Wilima.  
  
Sarain’s war is new. It has officially been two months since the civil war began in Sarain, seven months since Dusan _zhir_ Anduo tried to overthrow Adigun for the throne. But Kalasin sits around the fire to eat with her cousins, shivering, and the absence of her mother is the same acute agony as the past twenty-one years. Her uncle’s spot has sat empty five years. Sarain’s war is not new.  
  
Kalasin asks about her dearest younger cousin, Eline. Five years ago, when Kalasin was last home, Eline was pregnant and glowing, hand-in-hand with a new lover. The cousins reveal: the lover confessed. The river returned Eline.  
  
Every night, her people tell stories. No one asks Kalasin about the Wilimas or the Anduos. They do not ask her about politics, about isolation, about alienation, about choices, about sacrifice. They do not ask her about the bruises green and purple on her wrists, on her neck. Sat beside her in the firelight, her cousins Sonir and Inea never let go of her hands.  
  
For Kalasin, home is a serrated knife, bone so sharp it could cut any ties — if only she lifted the blade. Kalasin is never an outlander, always a stranger. She is never gone; she is always away.  
  
A week later, when she must return to Adigun, her family holds her. “Don’t forget,” Sonir tells her.  
  
“I never could,” Kalasin says. She rides away. At the river crossing, she thinks she hears Eline, singing.  
  
Kalasin sees her daughter for the last time in the spring, while the land blooms. She kisses her daughter’s forehead. She doesn’t tremble. Pathom and Thiratay guard the door. It is Adigun’s choice that pushes Kalasin to the edge, but it is her choice to leap off it.  
  
Sarain’s war is not new. Hundreds of K’miri women have been slaughtered. The lowlanders speak only of Kalasin, Kalasin, Kalasin.  
  
They carry her still.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Debra Magpie Earling's "The Lost Journals of Sacajewea", a huge inspiration for this series overall.


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